Rebel Island

“Which would make it hard to speak against him.”

She held my eyes. She seemed to be struggling with something even heavier than the death of her children, some burden she was not sure she could carry.

“I understand you found a staircase,” she said at last.

“You knew about it?”

She set down her tablecloth. She smoothed the flood-stained linen. “You can live here for many years, and still the walls surprise you. Now you must excuse me, señor.”

After she’d gone I stared at the pile of wet napkins in the sink for several minutes before I realized what was bothering me.

The walls surprise you. I got up and headed for the collapsed bedroom that Alex Huff had cordoned off on the first floor—the bedroom that would be catty-corner below Lane’s, at the bottom of the secret stairwell.

34

Garrett found Lane in Chris Stowall’s bedroom, which didn’t make him too happy. She was sitting on the bed, looking through a journal. She’d changed clothes: jeans, a white T-shirt, slip-on shoes. A lot more practical for a hurricane, but Garrett didn’t remember anything but dresses in her closet upstairs. Then it occurred to him she’d borrowed the shirt and jeans from Chris Stowall’s wardrobe. She was wearing a dead man’s clothes.

“His diary?” Garrett asked.

Lane seemed to have trouble focusing on him. “Yes. It was just lying here.”

He wheeled himself over, feeling like an intruder. He’d hardly known Chris Stowall at all, but he was jealous of the way Lane ran her hands over his diary pages. Chris and she had a long history together. Garrett had known her only one day. That was the hardest part, whenever he met a woman—getting past the ghosts.

“I was thinking about taking the journal,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do with it, but…it’s all that’s left of him.”

“Give it to his folks?” Garrett suggested.

Lane winced. “His mother would shut the door in my face. Or worse.”

“Then leave it. Somebody found my diary after I was dead, I hope they’d burn it.”

“That incriminating?”

“I don’t keep a diary, darlin’.”

She looked down at the last page of writing, traced her finger over a drawing of a wave. “Chris wanted to do so many things. None of them ever happened.”

“Did he choose the room you’d stay in?”

“I suppose. It was just an open room. Why?”

Garrett shifted in his chair. “That guy you saw in your closet? Tres thinks he was there for a reason. He found a wire, see. It might’ve been part of a bomb.”

“A bomb.”

“Yeah.” Garrett felt guilty, heaping this on Lane after all the other crap she’d been through. “My little bro, you know, he was just wondering—”

“Why a bomber would target my room.”

“Something like that.”

She closed the journal. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and Garrett liked the way it looked. He could see more of her face, her silver sand dollar earrings. She had a beautiful neck, smooth and white.

“Garrett, I’ve got skeletons in the closet. But Calavera isn’t one of them. I don’t know why he would bother with me.”

“I figured it was crazy.”

“But you had to ask.”

“So these skeletons in your closet…it’s not just your ex-husband, huh?”

“I don’t keep a diary, either.”

“Fair enough.” He stared at the pocket of her T-shirt—Chris’s T-shirt. It was decorated with a green crab and the words Mike’s Bar, Matamoros. He and Alex had been there once. They’d borrowed the Navarre family sedan, told Garrett’s parents they were going into Corpus Christi for the day to search for a used car for Alex. Instead, they’d driven to the border for a few drinks. The memory weighed on Garrett like a lead apron.

“I need your advice,” he told Lane.

“My advice? You hardly know me.”

But Garrett felt like he knew her as well as he needed. He didn’t know why, but he had no trouble talking to her, and he figured Lane must feel the same way. After all, she’d told him all about the murder her ex-husband had committed, that awful night they’d dragged the immigrant’s body into the woods. Maybe with a person like Lane, you didn’t need to keep a diary. She was a better place to record your thoughts.

“I want to know what to do,” he admitted. He brought out the letter Alex had left for him, and told her what it said.

35

Black plastic tarp and boards still blocked the end of the hall. I ripped them away as best I could. The door itself didn’t look particularly damaged. The knob turned, but it wouldn’t open. I kicked it, gave it shoulder treatment. Nothing. As if it was barricaded from the inside.

I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. One blocked-off room. One more damaged area in a hotel that was falling apart. So what?

Then I noticed the number on the door: 102. I was standing in front of the same room my parents and I had always stayed in—the last room they’d ever shared as a married couple.

I remembered at age twelve limping down this hallway, the sole of my right foot burning from a jellyfish sting. I’d been exploring the northern tip of the island, imagining I was hiding from Jean Laffitte’s pirates, when I bravely charged the surf and stepped straight into a blue and red bubble of pain.

My parents weren’t anticipating me back until lunch. They expected me to take care of myself during the mornings. But I hobbled back to room 102, determined not to cry. Halfway down the corridor, I ran into Alex’s father.

I’d only seen him around the island a few times before—cutting planks for a new dock or hammering tiles on the roof. He was a burly man. He had unruly blond hair like his son’s, a scraggly beard, skin the color of saddle leather. His sun-faded clothes and unraveling straw cowboy hat always made me think of Robinson Crusoe. Up close, he smelled like whiskey, not so different from my father’s smell, but Mr. Huff had a more kindly smile. There was an odd light in his eyes—the kind of look a sailor gets from staring too long at a watery horizon, as if the glare of the sun had burned permanently into his corneas.

He took one look at the way I was walking and said, “Jellyfish, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

A muffled shout came from down the hall—from behind my parents’ door.

Mr. Huff pursed his lips. “Why don’t you come to the kitchen, son? I’ll put some baking soda on that sting.”

“I want to see my parents.” My voice quivered. My foot felt as if it were melting.

“Son, it’s better you didn’t. Sometimes things have to get worse for a long time before they can get better.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. He put his hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away and continued down the hall.

I heard the yelling. I should’ve known better, but I opened the door.

Little details: the shattered glass on the floor, liquor soaking into the carpet. The cut above my mother’s eye, a streak of blood trickling down her cheekbone. My father’s clenched fist, his gold college ring biting into the white flesh of his fingers.

“Get out!” my mother screamed. And in that heartbeat, I thought she was talking to me.

I turned and ran, the pain in my foot forgotten.

“Tres!” my father yelled.

I knew he was coming after me, but I kept running. I caught a glimpse of Mr. Huff’s face—pain and sympathy in his eyes. But he didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t intervene.

Sometimes things have to get worse for a long time.

Later, after my ill-fated fishing expedition with Alex, my mother found me and brought me back to the hotel room. The broken glass had been cleaned up. The cut on her eye was covered by a butterfly bandage. She treated my foot and tried not to cry as she explained that my father was gone. He’d taken the ferry back to the mainland without us. My mother and he were taking a little vacation from their marriage.

I didn’t understand. In my mind, vacation meant Rebel Island. My dad was already on vacation. Where would he go?

Now, thinking back on that day, my foot began to ache again. I pressed my hand against the battered door of room 102 and imagined pushing it open, seeing my parents inside.

Why would Alex block off this room?

Only one way to find out. I turned and headed back toward the stairs.

Lane Sanford was packing, but she closed her suitcase and latched it when I came in.

“Here to see me or my closet?” she asked.

“Your closet,” I said. “Most popular one in the hotel.”

“Naturally.” She turned her back to me and bundled some clothes, then hesitated. Apparently she realized she needed to put them in the suitcase, but she’d closed it too quickly, and she didn’t want to open it in my presence.

“Did Garrett talk to you?” I asked.

She folded a pink dress. “About the bomb. Yes.”

“You sound pretty calm about it.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “That’s why.”

“I can show you the door.”

“Tres, I don’t believe anyone besides my husband would want to kill me. That’s what I mean. And frankly, a bomb isn’t Bobby’s style.”

There was tightness in her voice, like a guitar string tuned an octave too high.

“Were you and Chris Stowall involved?”

She shook her head. “Not the way you mean.”

“In what way, then?”

“I told you. I’d known him since high school. Chris was no angel, but he came from a hard family. He knew how I felt. He would never hurt anyone…”

“Unless?”

She sat on her bed and looked up at me. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Is that what you told Garrett?”

Her cheeks colored. “I told Garrett I was sorry we’d met like this. I told him Chris was a friend, trying to protect me. Chris offered me shelter. He offered me more help, too. But I refused.”

“What kind of help?”

“To get my husband out of the way.”

“To kill him.”

“I don’t think he could have done it. Not really. But he was angry. He said he knew someone who could.”

“Calavera.”

“I don’t know.”

“Chris used the same threat on Ty and Markie. He was helping them run drugs, pressuring them for more money. He seemed to like having Calavera as an ace up his sleeve.”

“Chris tried to help me, Tres. He didn’t deserve to die for that.”

The tone of her voice made me wonder if I’d completely misread Stowall’s feelings for her. “You talk about him as if he was a relative.”

She got up and took her suitcase. “The closet is all yours. I’ll take my things to Garrett’s room.”

She said it defiantly, daring me to protest her moving in with Garrett.

“Lane, was Chris your brother?”

The look in her eyes was close to pity, as if she felt sorry for how little I understood the world. “Tres, my married name was Stowall. Chris was my husband’s brother. That’s why he knew how much danger I was in.”